Sunday, January 25, 2009

Diving into the Dessicate Mainstream


I spent last two evenings with the `main stream' Marathi literature, thanks to the annual literary programme of the Baroda Marathi Vangmai Parishad. On Friday, we were offered what the organizers felt was ` Marathi Love Poetry'. Well, the Maharashtrians dont really have a reputation as lovers. I cant think of Marathi counterparts to Sohni Mahival, Heer Ranjha, Dhola Maru , Devdas Paro or Romeo and Juliet and other romantic pin ups. Bajirao Mastani is not exactly a love story. Mastani was Bajirao's kept rather than a lover. Keeps and mistresses are common; love is rather rare in Maharashtra (as anywhere else probably). Predictably, most of the traditional love poetry in Marathi is mildly sentimental erotica consisting of the hackneyed nature imagery and lyricism. The famous love poetry in Marathi is made famous due to brilliant musical compositions and heavenly voices of the singers rather than the geniuses of the poets. There is neither imagination, nor passion in most of the `love poetry' that is sold across the counter here. Don’t expect to find Octavio Paz or Pablo Neruda or Lorca or Donne. Don’t even expect to find Kabir or Meera. Marathi manus is basically quarrelsome and bickering and brawling is what comes natural to him. Egoism and love are rather incompatible bedfellows. Women poets who write love poetry. Please don’t even mention them. Sentimentality minus lust takes away even the least interesting thing in love poetry. Why did I go there? Simply out of curiosity, because I find the term `Marathi love poetry’ something of an oxymoron.
Interestingly young Marathi people were absent. Not because they find traditional Marathi poetry boring, as some of us would like to believe, but simply because they are not interested in poetry, literature, or things like that. Marathi youngsters in Baroda are irresponsible because they have left something like poetry in the hands of old. Maharashtrians in Baroda are Marathi merely because of historical reasons now. Many Marathi youth in Baroda prefer not to use Marathi out of shame, and in case they do, well they do have reasons for being ashamed. Marathi in Baroda is a dialect of Gujarati rather than being a dialect of Marathi.
The programme on Saturday, yesterday that is, was Ms Mangala Khadilkar's logorreal cultural gossip about the so-called greats. The pretty woman talked non-stop for two hours without a break. She is a famous media person who is reputed as an anchor and reporter. She shamelessly (well, she was paid for it and that is what the audience wanted) dropped all the famous names she had encountered and talked about how an anchor is peripheral to fame and how a good anchor should not mistake the closeness to the celebrities as a real intimacy and that sort of things. I was interested because her Marathi was good and the chances of hearing good Marathi are rather rare in Baroda.
Today, we have the noted actor Sharad Ponkshe who played Nathuram Godse in ` Mee Nathuram Godse Boltoi’. That will be interesting because, it is Nathuram, rather than Gandhi , who is hot in Gujarat. He is the sinner whom people identify with rather easily. Gandhi is a saint and saints are not meant to be identified with. I look at Gandhi’s attempt to identify with the ` common man’ and `the lowest among the low’ rather suspiciously. I think it was a strategy on the part of the Mahatma to promote himself circuitously as a saint. The` common man’, if such an animal really exists, would be more interested in Nathuram today I suppose.
What is really fascinating about the `popular literature’ and culture is its allergy for intelligence. You can’t be intelligent in your work and be popular in India. If you are really intelligent, like Shah Rukh Khan or Amitabh Bacchan, you have to intelligently keep intelligence out of your work.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Remembering Vignan Vivek Vartul, Valsad


Spare a thought for a short story of Vignan Vivek Vartul, an ephemeral movement to popularize science in a small coastal town in the Southern Gujarat called Valsad in the nineties. Vignan Vivek Vartul literally means the Circle of Discerning Science Lovers. It organized talks of renowned scientists like Dr JJ Rawal, a famous astrophysicist from Science Centre, Mumbai, on 24 November 1998 and Prof P.C. Mehta, a well known physicist and mathematicians on the subjects like 'Life of Stars' on 28 April 1999 .


It arranged sky watching programs at the time of eclipses (1995 and 1999), comets like Hyakutake (26 Feb 1996) and Hale-Bopp (1997)and meteor showers like the Leonids. It also carried out a survey on the cause and effect of stress on the students of twelfth standard (science) in the schools in Valsad. It collaborated with Science Centre in Dharampur and organized various events for school and college students. The Circle met occasionally and discussed things like the relationship between science and spirituality. The movement fizzled out towards the end of the millennium. 
It was started by motley of young science enthusiasts sheerly out of their interest in science. The spearhead was Vikas Upadhyay, a bright psychology student, amateur astronomer, who presently works as the chief editor of a local Gujarati daily and the spear chiefly consisted of people like Satish Kulkarni, a chemistry graduate, Hitesh Parekh, an economics graduate, Kalpesh Desai, a chemistry graduate, Kandarp Trivedi, a lawyer and poet, Sunil Agarkar, an amateur aero-modeller and professionally a legal consultant, and Sachin Ketkar, a not-so-bright writer among others. These men were in their twenties or thirties then.

The unusual assortment of animals that constituted `V4’ had only two things in common: friendship and an unceasing itch for discussions on just about anything under the sun- and very often foraying into the things that lay beyond the sun too. The discussions were the usual young collegians’ discussions which frequently began with the Special Theory of Relativity and ended with sex. Very often the discussions were triggered off by the writings of a renowned Gujarati columnist Raman Pathak in the daily called the Gujarat Mitra. He called himself a 'rationalist’ and was an inspiration for an organization named Satya Shodhak Sabha in Surat. The work of this Sabha was eradication of superstitions by exposing the all too common 'miracles’. Pathak’s column ' Raman Brahman’ (literally 'Rovings of Raman’) consisted of sweeping, outrageous and often silly generalizations. Nevertheless it managed to be provoke and challenge the traditional thinking. He is a communist, a rare thing in Gujarat, an atheist and proponent of science and his writings propagated atheism. Unfortunately, his megalomania and arrogance usually got better of his ' rationality’. Science was presented as counter-traditional and anti-religious,which it very often is, but not always). Therefore it perturbed most of the intellectuals of southern Gujarat. Many of the 'intellectuals’ were Gandhians, who saw 'spirituality’ as something unproblematic and given. There was a lot of resistance to Pathak and Satya Shodhak Sabha and there was lot of verbiage regarding ' Synthesis of Science and Spirituality’. Spirituality, for most of the intellectuals of region meant Hindu Spirituality and more specifically Brahmin Spirituality. Gujarat, lest we forget it, is also the laboratory of Hindutva. I have witnessed how some version of Gandhism merges seamlessly into Godseism.
Many youngsters who started V-4 were dissatisfied with the polemical and negative approach of Raman Pathak and his followers. They rightly felt that this approach was only interested in ideological quarrels and was doing absolutely nothing about science which was something far more wonderful. They thought science was too important to be labelled as being merely a counter-traditional ideology of promoting atheism. Science, obviously, is not counter traditional for sake of being counter traditional. It is counter-traditional because the traditional framework very often fails to come up with a satisfactory explanation of phenomena under consideration. The term 'Vivek’ or 'Discernment' was an ingenious way of distancing itself from the Raman Pathak-Satya Shodhak Variety of looking at science
The Upadhyay-Kulkarni- Ketkar crew decided to make the organization more formal by making late Dr. BG Naik, a very retired lecturer and the principal of the science college, Valsad, the president of the circle. Late Prof Naik was a respected figure in Valsad. He was a veteran Gandhian and a science teacher. Interestingly, people hardly noticed a contradiction here. Gandhi was extremely allergic to things like Science and Technology and considered them as symbol of the Evil Western Civilization. Hence, Gandhian Scientist is in many ways a contradiction in terms. However, he was elected as president for many reasons. He had a background in academic science as well as certain reputation in the town. Both these things, we hoped, would make things smoother for us to gain access to the schools and colleges in the town. He had also written on various topics like the clichéd  ' Synthesis of Science and Spirituality’ etc.
The senior members of the group consisted of people like Mr Meghraj Bhatt, a senior teacher of mathematics in Sheth RJJ School, Valsad, Mr. Sikligar, a retired science teacher and an amateur radio expert, Prof Lipsa Adhvaryu, a lecturer in Psychology in the Chikli College and Mr Bhatt of Dharampur Science Centre among others. The group met infrequently and discussed and planned the programmes. This went on for around almost a decade or so.
The movement fizzled out due to various reasons. The first and foremost reason was that it was a movement in a wrong place. Valsad, being a small town, displays a typical small town mindset consisting of laziness, complacency and careless self-contentment. 'Cultural Activities’ are mostly evening pass time entertainment, comparable to going to the Tithal Sea Beach. Valsad has never been very enthusiastic about genuine intellectual activity. Many people used to call it a 'quiet town for retired people’ and most of its cultural and intellectual activities were of 'retired people’ variety. Vibrant youth culture was largely absent. As a result except for the team that started V-4, other youngsters did not involve themselves with the movement. Science requires some sort of intellectually keen, passionate and rebellious spirit which was absent among the young Valsadians. Hence, as soon as the group that had founded the movement was scattered in all directions , it was not replaced by another young group of science enthusiasts.
The second reason as I see it is that the lack of interest in pure science, as opposed to applied sciences like engineering etc, is a characteristic of the Indian society. Thousands of years ago, Indian society was keen on theoretical as well as applied aspects of science. One has only to think of celebrated names like Varahamihir or Aryabhatt or Charaka. The intellectual traditions in India dried up with time and were replaced with cynical anti-intellectual outlook which is characteristic of most of the educated Indians today. The decline of interest in science coincides with the rise of religious fanaticism and bigotry in the nineties.
The third reason is that though V-4 ideologically distanced itself from the Leftist leaning Satya Shodhak Sabha, it did not categorically distance itself from the hegemonic Brahmanism (read Hindutva). Most probably because the nuclear group of V-4 consisted largely of middle class Brahmins. Brahmins are fond of speculations and debates, but science is not merely speculation and debate. Its nucleus is the spirit of critical inquiry, experimentations and actual physical involvement in the laboratory. Arm chair science cannot go very far. The group was not really very 'counter traditional’, though it opposed the things like 'superstitions’ etc. Brahmanism too is not very sympathetic to 'superstitions’ which are mostly non-elitist and folk traditions. The movement would have greater significance had it been openly critical of Brahmanism.
However, the most important thing about this movement that it actually happened in an unlikely place and it was fuelled by unlikely people. It carried out many interesting activities which others would not have taken up in those times. Valsad, however, is not likely to remember such things. And more importantly for me- I was part of it and I cherish the memories.

Friday, January 2, 2009

Life Between Poems

2008 passed away like a limping bird. It was the Year of Terror and disillusionment. I cannot join my countrymen in their pledge against ` War Against Terror' as I am not sure what it means in the first place. War against whom? Against Pakistan? Terrorists in India? It reminded me of a Disney film `Lion King' where Simba's schemeing uncle Scar calls upon the hyeanas to `be prepared' and the hyeanas join in by shouting ` Be prepared', but they simply dont know `be prepared' for what? I think most of the people who have pledged for ` war against terror' are in similar state. The BJP feels that this means people who have declared `War against Terror' will vote for them. Amusingly, most of the people who have campained agaisnt ` War on Terror' are the people who hardly even vote. They have already insulated themselves against the dirty democratic process.

As a writer, it was a year of same old struggles and hopes. I am presently awaiting publication of my second collection of Marathi poems and embroiled in the same old headaches as a critic. A genuine Indian writer is always nowhere man living and writing in a no-man's land.

One evening as I was trying to fall asleep, a thought crossed my mind or rather crossed out my mind: that the life between writing two poems is utterly futile and meaningless and is of no relevance at all. The whole structure of morals and quarrels that we live out has no purpose apart from being what they are. Dilip Chitre said somewhere that he lived purely out of curiosity. I feel I have lived because I have no other choice. I don't have guts to exercise my choice of terminating my life. May be it is an extreme view of things, but I feel it is actually liberating.

As I continue to write without any appreciation ( Chitre writing about Kolatkar had said that in order to receive critical attention as a writer in India or Marathi, it is necessary to die, I continue writing in a cultural vaccuum as other people who know how to keep everyone happy or at least keep the people who matter happy continue to hold the stage. But then back to basics, who do you write for ? You write for yourselves and for the strangers. You cannot count on strangers as you cannot count on your acquaintances, I am counting on my enemies. They are my true sources of inspiration. Whats more I forgive them, and as Oscar Wilde says, nothing irritates them. I dont know where I would have been, had it not for them.